


Impulse Control

by BristlingBassoon



Series: When we met, you'd never expect this [2]
Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Background Gene/Babe, Chaotic energy Lewis Nixon, Custody Arrangements, Dad feelings, Divorce, Domestic, Father-Son Relationship, M/M, Nix and Winters are basically married, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:36:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27667576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BristlingBassoon/pseuds/BristlingBassoon
Summary: Lewis Nixon can't stop being impulsive. This wouldn't be such a problem if every snap decision didn't irreversibly alter the course of his life.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Series: When we met, you'd never expect this [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023108
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	Impulse Control

**Author's Note:**

> This follows on from my other Winnix fic - https://archiveofourown.org/works/27513238 - but you don't need to read that one first to read this one. But the incident with Gene and the flowers follows on from that fic, as does the reference to how Nix and Dick originally got together.

When Lewis arrives home from the most torrid Thanksgiving weekend of his life, the house is lit up, friendly as a postcard. The frost rimes the windows in the _most_ picturesque way, and on the mailbox there’s the lightest dusting of snow. He can see Dick by his reading lamp in the front room, hunched over a book, his face aglow. The domesticity of the scene makes him chuckle grimly as his frozen fingers find the door.

“Hey Dick, when d’you get back?” he calls, shucking off his coat in the entryway, and dumping his suitcase on the boot rack.

“Oh, about an hour ago,” Dick says. “Traffic wasn’t too bad. I left early in order to make it back before dark.” He puts down his book. “I heated up a can of soup when I got in. There’s still some left on the stove, if you want any.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Lew replies. He walks through the lounge to the kitchen, and puts a dish of leftovers on the bench. Rolls wrapped in a tea towel, turkey in stolen pyrex. “How was your weekend, then?”

“Oh, it was nice enough,” says Dick, sounding a little tired and distracted. “Doesn’t feel quite the same being with family after being away from them for so long, and they look at you and only see the boy you once were. Feels awkward when you don’t fit that shape anymore.” He shifts in his chair. “My sister’s got kids now. Howard’s only about a year old and Joan’s nearly three. First time I got to see them.”

Lew flops down in the recliner opposite, puts his feet up. “Sounds cosy, all those kids running around. Dropping food on the floor, crying when you don’t put their hat and coat on in the right order or when you stop them from pulling the dog’s tail.”

Nobody tells you how infuriating kids are, or they do, but you never quite believe them until you have one of your own. They don’t tell you how much you miss your kid either, even when he’s in the other room.

He’d thought this weekend would be the first time he’d see Maxwell in three years, but Kathy declined to take him. Seems the in-laws were hosting thanksgiving, and Kathy was damned if she was going to subject herself to another stiff four-day-long Nixon family affair, now she didn’t have to. This despite the fact that Kathy’s mother cooks turkey that’s somehow raw on one side and shrivelled on the other.

“I’m not much good with kids,” Dick says. “Still at least Mom’s had the grandchildren box ticked, won’t be breathing down my neck nearly as much. She asked after you, by the way. Said you’re very kind to get me a job, even if I didn’t want to stick with it.”

It seems only yesterday that Dick left his job at Nixon Nitration Works, privately citing frustration with the elder Nixon’s less than competent leadership, saying that it was bad enough working alongside a Lieutenant Dike, let alone under one - but it’s actually been a couple of months.

“Did Kathy come?” Dick asks.

“No,” Lew said. “That’s sort of the point of divorce. No more thanksgivings. No, just me, my sister and her husband, sister’s kids asking me where Maxwell and aunty Kathy were, until my father told them to get back to the kids’ table and stop bothering us. Then as my mother and sister go into the kitchen to “help out”, despite the fact that we’ve got a cook to do that, and the kids run around and hide under all the chairs, my father gets out the cigars and has what he calls a talk with his son, but it’s actually just him talking at me. And then we do it again the next night, and the next night and then on Sunday we finally get to escape the house, because god forbid you just go for one night and break the Nixon Family Tradition, even if you live 15 minutes away and you’d much rather be sitting there in an empty house drinking coffee with your feet in a hot bath. At least the food’s better than the company and if you’re kind to the cook, you get to leave with the leftovers.” He sighs. “You know, Winters family thanksgiving is sounding pretty good. Think I might go next year instead. Tell your Mom your old war buddy ain’t got a home to go to, you can make it sound real sad. I’ll even shed a tear if I have to, so she doesn’t feel too put out by getting an extra seat ready.”

He’s pretty sure he’s managed to make it sound funny, but Dick doesn’t laugh.

“You think we’ll ever fit back into our families?” he says, giving Lew a very serious look.

Lew cracks up. “Well it’s too late for me, Dick.” He smirks. “Not after the worst Thanksgiving weekend known to man.”

“Nix, you know what I say about hyperbole. It’s the refuge of the door to door salesman.” Dick reaches over, and puts a hand on Lew’s forearm, where it stands out against his cream sweater. “I’m sure it wasn’t so bad, sure your mother was happy to see you at least. And your father -”

“Dick, he cut me off.”

“What?” Dick says, brow furrowed. His hand falls away.

“A tale as old as time,” he says grandly. “My father’s cut me out of the family fortune. Oh, and I’m fired.”

“What?!” Dick looks like he’s having trouble getting any words out. “What happened?”

“Oh, we were settling in for some perfect father-son banter, and he mentions my divorce. Says I might have fallen far short of keeping the family together, and lost him a grandson to some social-climbing woman, but now’s the time for me to grow up and get another wife and start again. Making more little Nixons, just in case Kathy’s got too much influence over Maxwell and he turns out to be a dud.”

“Lew, that’s awful,” Dick ventures. “Stanhope said that?”

“Yeah, well I’m paraphrasing a bit here. But after all, I’m the heir, which means Maxwell’s the heir. Well, was. Not any more. Good luck for Blanche’s kids then.” He waves his hand dismissively.

“Lew, you’ve only given me half the story,” Dick says.

“Well, he was going on about how I needed to grow up and stop batching, and that he’d started talking to his old boys network, seeing if they had any eligible daughters they wanted to set up. Nobody too high calibre, obviously not the first daughter, just younger ones who aren’t going to inherit anything, or difficult ones who need a Nixon to anchor them. Anyone happy enough for the leg up in society that they won’t mind hitching themselves to a divorced man. Well, my father’s listing Fords and Du Ponts and Boston Brahmins, and telling me he’d really stuck his neck out and I better put in the effort to make this work, and…” he trails off at this.

“And?”

“I might have lost it and told him I take it up the ass.”

Dick immediately puts his face in his hands, groaning. “Lewis, no. You didn’t.”

“Well you’re right,” he admits. “I didn’t exactly say that, what I actually said was something like “I don’t think Grace Vanderbilt or Alice Dupont wants a husband who takes it up the ass.”

“Lew, no!”

“Oh, it was worth it just to see his face,” Lewis says, grinning wickedly. It had been. He’d gone all red, and looked like he was about to have a heart attack. It strikes him that if his father had died right then and there, he’d inherit everything anyway. A spectacular irony if there ever was one.

Dick shakes his head. “Lew, that wasn’t a good idea.”

“Why not?” he challenges. “I’m proud of taking it up the ass, actually. It takes a certain amount of skill,” he raises an eyebrow suggestively at Dick, “and a level of effort that my father’s never put into anything in his life.”

Dick goes beet red. “That’s not a good mental image,” he mumbles, presumably thinking of Stanhope getting buggered.

“He can rage on all he likes about how he’s disappointed with his pansy son but at least I actually did something,” continues Lew with faux breeziness. “Hell, even _Dike_ went to war. I bet all _he_ did during the last war was sit behind a desk rolling banknotes around each cigar, having liquid lunches and war profiteering while other people did all of the work.”

“He’s not a good enemy to have,” Dick retorts. “God, Lew, he cut you off! What are you going to do for money?”

“Oh, that. Well, the plant’s losing money anyway, it doesn't really matter that he cut me off.” He grins confidently. “I guess I’m my own man, now. You want a turkey sandwich?” He gets up and walks to the kitchen and begins cutting one of the rolls open with the silver butter knife he pilfered from the Nixon table.

“No, Lew,” Dick calls exasperatedly. “I do _not_ want a turkey sandwich. For god’s sake, would you listen to yourself?”

“Yeah you do,” Lew answers. He picks up the pyrex lid to get at the turkey, turns it around in his hands and looks at the trademark. “Hey, there’s a thought! Corning. We could work there. You fancy a move to New York State?”

“Lew!” Dick yells.

“What?”

“You can’t just _do_ shit like that!”

“Yeah, well I did.” He brings in a plate with sandwiches on it. “Here you are, I made you one anyway.”

———————

Lew spends the rest of the evening frozen out, with Dick’s shoulder turned cold to him in bed. He lies, staring at the ceiling, waiting for some kind of breakthrough, and thinks again of his father’s spluttering, raging face. He feels a stab of defiance, mingled with a kind of hurt - not at his father’s rejection, for his approval had always seemed so thin, so conditional - but Dick refused to look at him. After all, hadn’t he stuck his neck out for him in a way?

He’d thaw out, he always did.

He falls into a fitful sleep and wakes up with his hand on Dick’s back, bunched in the fabric of his pyjamas. The man always insists on wearing those blue and white striped sets from Sears. When Lew first saw them, he’d made a quip about Little Nemo in Slumberland, only for Dick to correct him, insisting that Nemo always wore a _nightshirt,_ not pyjamas. Lew, of course, had chosen this moment to swipe him with a pillow.

Truth be told, he loves the pyjamas. After sleeping in three-week-old unwashed army fatigues in a hole in the ground, it’s nice to see Dick turning towards some home comforts.

Dick stirs, shifts, and Lew, despite himself, nuzzles close to him. His narrow back is pleasantly warm.

“Hey Lew?” he murmurs, voice heavy. “You awake?”

“Yeah,” Lew whispers hoarsely.

“I’m really sorry about your Dad.” He sounds painfully sincere, and Lew feels his eyes prickle in response.

“Yeah well, don’t be,” Lew replies. “But thanks anyway.”

Dick turns in Lew’s arms, sighs into his shoulder. “I can imagine he said some hurtful things to you.”

“Nothing he hasn’t said before.”

He can’t imagine what it would have been like to have the father Dick Winters has.

“Lew,” Dick murmurs, and Lew can feel rather than see his gaze through the dark, focussed intently on Lew’s face. “You need to be more careful.”

“I know,” he says glumly.

“I mean it,” Dick says, “It’s not a kind world out there.” He wraps his arm around Lew’s bare back. “And for heaven’s sake, it’s nearly winter. You ought to wear some pyjamas.”

_Not as cold as Bastogne,_ Lew thinks, but doesn’t say. A shiver runs through him.

“Oh Lew,” Dick says, sounding suddenly, crushingly sad. “What are we going to do now?”

———————-

Dick is determined to have a Monday like any other. A couple of months ago that would have meant waking up, shaving, putting on his suit and walking the few blocks to work, arriving twenty minutes before the whistle blew, with Nix stumbling in half an hour later, a fleck of shaving foam still on his neck. _You missed a spot,_ he’d stop himself from saying, having to sit on his hands so he didn’t run his thumb over the dark bristles under Nix’s jaw.

Now, though, he doesn’t need to worry about a whistle, and Nix doesn’t either. He lets Lew stay in bed as long as he likes, for once, and when Lew finally stumbles into the bathroom and squints at the medicine cabinet, holding his chin as he swipes half-heartedly with the razor, Dick watches him from the doorway the whole time.

“You want me to do that?” he says mildly.

Lew’s reflection glares at him.

“I was thinking I’d go off to the library,” Dick says. His usual routine is to buy three newspapers from the newstand, and take them to the reading room, taking his time to circle the employment advertisements that seem like they might actually be plausible prospects. Truth be told, when it came to jobs he’d do almost anything, or so he’d thought before working under Stanhope. When Nix sees him in the evenings poring over his clippings, he always kisses him and tells him there’s no rush. Take all the time that he needs. It’s rich, coming from someone so impulsive.

Today though, he can’t help feeling that two unemployed men in a household of two are two too many.

“On with the job search again?” Lew says, putting his hands on Dick’s shoulders as he sits at the table, finishing his coffee. “They must have a little plaque on your seat at the library by now.”

“Sure do.” He smiles. “Would you like to come with me?”

Lew shifts awkwardly behind him. “Uh, I can’t. I’ve got business.”

“As of now, Lewis, you’re unemployed. “

“As of _now,_ ” Lew says. Dick can almost hear his eyebrow raising sardonically.

“Well, take care of yourself, doing, er, whatever it is that you do. Maybe you should pack a sandwich.”

“Ha!” Lew says, pats Dick on the shoulder and then, picking up his car keys from the bureau, whisks out the door.

Huh. It’s odd to see Lew leave before him.

When he’s at the library he finds himself walking past his table at the reading room. His papers remain tightly furled under his arm, as he turns toward the chemistry section.

“Got any books on glass?” he asks a young librarian, who’s preoccupied with a green metal trolley of books. The guy’s cute, young, but somehow still tweedy. Dark blonde hair. Wearing glasses. Probably would have made Dick’s heart tremble a few years ago and he wouldn’t know why, but now he just feels a sort of fondness instead.

“What kind of books, sir?” the librarian says. Sir? Christ, he can’t be more than a kid. “Do you want glass blowing, chemistry, collecting?”

“Not sure,” Dick admits. “Chemistry, maybe. Chemical makeup of glass, industrial processes.”

“For chemistry, you’re best off starting here,” the librarian says, gesturing with an open hand. “The other two will be in the arts and crafts section.”

“Thank you for your help,” says Dick, loading up his free arm with books.

“Oh, no trouble at all, sir.”

——————-

“What are you reading?” Lew says.

Dick turns a page of the distressingly thick tome he’s got resting on his crossed legs. Seeing the book is giving Lew horrible thoughts of his time in college, lugging those bloody things around, poring over them in the study room, trying to underline the relevant points in pencil and ending up underlining everything and doodling in the margins. Still, at least the huge number of pages meant they made for good doorstops if you needed a little privacy.

“I’m reading about borosilicate glass,” Dick says. Lew almost falls asleep with excitement.

“A riveting choice,” he says.

“Well, I just thought that if you were serious about Corning, it might be useful to do a little reading on the subject.”

Wow, trust Dick to remember a throwaway line between a story about a fatherly rejection and an offer of an unwanted turkey sandwich. And trust him to immediately turn to research in response.

“How’d you know I was serious?” Lew demands.

“Because when you want something,” Dick says, squinting over a passage that’s written in particularly tiny font, “you go for it feet first. You’ve never had an impulse you didn’t follow through.”

“Really?” Lew says, although he can’t help grinning. “I wanted to kiss you for at least two years before I did it. How’s that for impulse control?”

“Says the guy who got annoyed with his father and immediately decided to tell him about his buggery habits.”

“Yeah, says the guy who couldn’t wait ten minutes to be properly romanced and humped my leg instead,” Lew retorts.

“You got me there,” Dick replies, smiling broadly. “Now, how about I stop pretending I understand chemistry for a minute and we get something to eat?”

“Turkey sandwich?” Lew says, mockingly.

“I’d rather be killed,” Dick replies.

———————

“Did you know my father once tried to kill someone with an iron bar?” Lewis says, flippantly, as he cuts into his steak.

Dick drops his cutlery in shock, the knife bouncing off the table and onto the floor.

‘It’s true,” Lewis continues. “They wrote about it in the New York Times.”

“What?” Dick hisses, before ducking under the table to try and find his knife. “Oh hell - “

“I wouldn’t have known had I not been digging in his desk one afternoon when I was 15, trying to see whether there was anything interesting in there. He had the clipping.”

“Lew, if that’s a joke it isn’t a very funny one.”

“I’m serious! He got arrested, but I’m not sure if they ended up charging him for it. Probably not. Ah, my father the violent criminal.” He remembers the face he’d made when he found the article, yellowed and stuck in a folder - less bothered by the fact that his father would have violently beaten up a fellow Yale boy with a hunk of pig iron, which doesn’t seem that surprising in retrospect, than the fact that he’d kept a trophy of it, carefully clipped out with scissors. Lew’s surprised there wasn’t a chunk of metal sitting in the drawer beside it.

Dick’s face has shifted from horrified to mad. It’s the same shocked anger his face wore the night before. Ah, he’s done it again, made Dick angry. It’s becoming a bad habit.

“And yet you decided to tell him - “ Dick whispers furiously, and then drops his voice even lower, so it’s barely a breath. “You decided to tell him _that_ when you know what he’s capable of.”

“Yeah, I did.” Lew chews thoughtfully. “And you know what? It felt freeing. I guess it took jumping out of a plane three times and nearly dying at least twice for me to work out that I’m not afraid of him anymore.”

Dick’s face changes, the fury gone, replaced with that strange, sad look he gets sometimes. He darts his head around - to the waitress, back to the bar - and then reaches across the table and puts his hand on Nix’s own.

“It wasn’t worth living for an approval I was never going to get. I should have told him three years ago,” Lew says, “but I wasn’t brave enough then.”

The waitress moves and Dick carefully slides his hand away, and puts it on the salt cellar.

“Do you think I should tell mine?” he says, voice still low. His face is so earnest Lew’s heart might just fall out onto the table right there.

“Do what you think is best,” Lew replies. “I’m certainly not going to make you.”

Dick gives him a sad sort of smile. “I shot someone, in Holland. I still see his face. Maybe Stanhope has to live with something similar, even if nobody punished him for it.”

“You know that’s not the same thing.”

Dick sighs, heavily. “Who can say, really?”

Sometimes it’s hard to cheer Dick Winters up, no matter how much Lewis tries. He orders pie for both of them anyway.

“Well…” Dick says, after their uneasy silence has relaxed into an easy one. “If you’re serious about Corning, how are we going to swing it?”

Lew smiles, happy to deliver something good. “I’ve already started arranging it.”

Dick stares at him. “How?”

The waitress arrives with their pie and a refill of coffee.

“Thank you miss,” Nix says, nodding to her. He grabs a fork and digs it into the pie, cleaving away a small formation of lemon curd, topped with a glacier of lemon meringue.

“Well,” he continues, after he’s finished his mouthful. “I rung head office at Corning, expressed an interest in new opportunities for myself, and a friend of mine from the war with extensive personnel and supply management experience. They seemed delighted to have a Nixon calling them out of the blue.” He smirked. “Sometimes nepotism comes in handy.”

“Can you rely on nepotism anymore?” Dick says quietly, turning his own pie plate as if he’s a geologist and the pie’s some kind of newly discovered mineral.

“Oh, I can,” Nix continues, breezily. “Stopped by the plant today and got a letter of recommendation for both of us.”

Dick shoots him a look of surprise. It’s a look Nix has long gotten used to, but it still makes him delighted. Something about always being able to keep sensible, considered Dick Winters on his toes, to make him feel like every day’s a new adventure, and they aren’t just two guys who’ve lost the rhythm and purpose they shared for the last three years, aren’t just two guys working at a failing chemical plant, aren’t just two guys who are now unemployed and face the prospect of worrying about loan payments and how best to spread butter on bread so thinly that one stick is going to last you a whole week. Even if the constant surprises are probably deeply frustrating for poor Dick, who’d probably be better off with someone who’s a good deal steadier. Someone who might have dinner on the table the same time every day, who writes thank you cards routinely, who doesn’t forget to shower sometimes.

Which is funny, because Dick once gave him a surprise far bigger than anything he could ever come up with himself. Even knowing all the worst parts - the bad family, the drinking, the fact that he can’t give Dick any kids, he can’t marry him, he can’t hold his hand in public, even with all that, Dick chose him.

You can’t get anything more surprising than that.

“Did your father somehow forget the events of this weekend?” Dick finally says.

“Oh no chance in hell of that happening,” Lew says, grinning wryly. He lowers his voice. “No, I just talked to his secretary, got her to type up two letters. And then…well, I managed to catch him in his office, and I told him that if he didn’t sign them, I’d go talk to the papers about what I’d said to him.”

“You didn’t,” Dick says, staring at Lew with horror.

“Oh, I had no intention of doing it,” Lew says, “but my father already knows I’m enough of an agent of chaos that it wouldn’t be out of the question.”

“Do you want to get yourself arrested?” Dick whispers.

“I don’t have to!” Lew says. “He’ll do anything for reputation, even if it means providing glowing recommendations to the two people in the world he now hates more than anyone.” He grins. “Besides - if he didn’t sign the letters I was going to forge his signature anyway.”

Dick chews silently for a moment, the muscles in his cheek twitching like they want to go AWOL from his face. He swallows carefully, takes a sip of coffee, and all the while he’s staring at Lew, eyes quartz-hard.

“This is not a conversation we should be having a diner, Lew,” he says finally.

“When has that ever stopped me?” Lew replies, and knocks his knee against Dick’s under the table.

Dick, despite himself, smiles, and in that moment it’s the most wonderful thing Lew’s ever seen.

“I’d kill you if I didn’t love you,” he whispers to Nix the second they get out the door.

—————————-

The move goes surprisingly well. It helps that they don’t have very much to pack. Dick can’t get out of the habit of living lightly, he’s seen all too well what happens to things in war. No sense being precious about a nice table or a charming dinner service if it’s going to be smashed in a looting raid or blown out the side of your house.

Nix has of course arranged a house quite close to the factory. It’s in the workers’ housing, nothing fancy, but he assures Dick it’ll do until they get that farm Dick’s always been dreaming of, although Dick’s started to adjust that dream to make it fit his new reality. He can’t imagine Nix at a farm, other than him saying “oh _hell_ no” the minute he sees Dick shovelling manure or pulling a slippery, kicking calf free from the cow.

He’s kind of terrified about starting at Corning, because let’s face it, he doesn’t know shit about glass, and don’t these guys all have industrial chemistry degrees? But he ends up in the personnel area, and it turns out he’s very good at accounting and payroll. Even has his own secretary, who seems delighted that Dick isn’t terribly demanding (or demeaning, he thinks, shuddering as recalls the gossip at Nixon Nitration about which secretaries are up for it.) He can’t imagine leaning on someone you outrank like that, even though some of the men look at the secretaries with wedding bells ringing at the back of their mind.

He has no idea what Nix is doing, some bizarre mix of research and development and marketing, but he’s always been a smart guy, whereas Dick’s a studier. He works hard to understand things, whereas Nix often just charms and coasts. He’d probably end up winning a Nobel prize if he put the work in.

He doesn’t see a lot of Nix at work, but their time at home more than makes up for it. It might be a bland, blank place with no pictures on the walls and pink tiles in the bathroom, but it’s a world away from the world. Standing behind Lew at the mirror in the bathroom, wrapping his arms around his waist as Lew tries to get an arm free to reach for his toothbrush. Kissing him at night before they get into bed, like an evening prayer. Lazy sex on a Sunday morning, with nobody to rouse them, and all the time to tease Lew, to run a hand up his thigh, or kiss his lower back or run a hand through his hair, fingers across his mouth, until Lew bites his fingers playfully and tells Dick to stop taunting him and fuck him already. Or then there’s the times when Lew flops on top of Dick when he’s just trying to read on the couch like a civilised person, and before he can be annoyed about his poor creased book, Lew’s straddling him and unbuttoning his shirt, raising his eyebrow in a question.

Then there’s the times when Lew takes him. It feels so much more intimate that way, somehow. Lew’s always so gentle and vulnerable with him, and even though he’s the one pushing himself inside, Dick always feels like he’s the one doing the comforting.

“There, that’s it,” he often says, as Lew’s shaky hands move to his hips. “It’s alright, Lew, it’s alright.” And then he loses himself in bliss that’s almost painful.

He never questions what it is that makes them like this - hell, why is anyone the way they are? He doesn’t ask why Lew whimpers in his sleep sometimes, a sound eerily reminiscent of the noise he makes when he’s fucked, but Lew’s sleeping face is creased with pain.

Sometimes he’s the one who wakes, sweating, writhing, and it’s Lew who has to hold him. It feels good to feel small sometimes.

“You’re a kind man, Dick Winters,” he murmurs at the sink one morning.

“What brought that on?” Dick says, putting his hand on top of Lew’s.

“I just thought you needed to hear it.”

———————

“Come on,” Lew says excitedly one Saturday. It’s May, the trees outside have thawed and bloomed and greened, and Lew looks as cheeky and playful as a spring lamb. “We need to get going in 20 minutes.”

“Where are we going exactly?” mumbles Dick around his toothbrush as he carefully brushes his teeth.

“It’s Maxwell’s birthday today! I’m going to surprise him. Oh, and you’re coming too. For backup,” he adds.

“Lew,” Dick says, “did you tell Kathy you were coming?”

“No,” Lew says breezily. “That’s what a surprise is.”

“Lew, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Isn’t it a five hour drive?”

“No, it’s a mere three or so. Her and her new man Fred, they live in Scranton now.”

“I still think you should call her,” Dick says warningly. “And if you don’t, I will.”

“Fine,” says Lew, raising up his hands. He pulls a well-thumbed black book with a cracked leather binding out of the bureau drawer. “Here’s my address book, be my guest.”

“She still Kathy Nixon?” Dick asks, thumbing through the pages, finding the _N_ s.

“I wasn’t about to make a new entry for her, so yes,” Lew replies.

As Lew gathers together bits of pieces to put in the car, including an ostentatiously wrapped present Dick somehow hadn’t seen even though it was sitting in the corner of the room, Dick finds Kathy’s entry and dials the number.

The line sounds thin, weak, but they dealt with far worse on field telephones in the war.

“Hello, Royston residence, Mrs Royston speaking,” comes the voice of the woman who must be the former Mrs Lewis Nixon. Who shared a bed with Lew, who bore his child. Dick takes a deep breath and tries not to hate her. She must have loved Nix once, and he, at the very least, knows what that feels like.

“Hello, Mrs Royston,” Dick begins, trying to keep the shake out of his voice. “I’m Dick Winters, calling on behalf of Lewis Nixon.”

“Who are you?” Kathy Royston says suspiciously.

“I went to war with him,” Dick says, simply, as if that covers it.

“Right,” Mrs Royston continues. “He might have mentioned you in a letter.” He can hear the crackle of her breath on the line. “Well, Mr Winters, why is my former husband getting you to do his dirty work for him?”

“He’s not,” protests Dick, although in essence, Nix is doing exactly that. “I’m just letting you know that Lew and I are coming today to visit your son Maxwell. I understand it’s his birthday.”

“Yeah, we’re having a party,” Mrs Royston says. “I’d ask why you’re inviting yourself, but you know what? Come. It sure won’t do Lewis any harm to have someone to rein him in.” She gives a short, barking laugh. “Just glad for once it won’t have to be me.” 

“Thank you Mrs Royston,” Dick says. “Goodbye.” But Mrs Royston has already hung up, and there’s just the hiss of empty air on the line.

He feels oddly sad when he gets in the car, as if he’s seen another side of Nixon, a side he wasn’t meant to see. He’s quiet, not saying much until they turn out of Corning, and then he turns to Nix, who’s got his sunglasses on against the hopeful May light.

“What were you like as a husband?” he finds himself saying.

“Bad,” Lewis says, eyes forward. “But I don’t feel great about it.”

“I can’t help feeling jealous of her,” Dick admits, watching the trees whip past the car. “After all, she was the way it was supposed to be.”

“Don’t be,” Lew retorts, his mouth hard. “After all, I chose you.”

Dick laughs, but the sound of it is oddly mean, and when it leaves his mouth he doesn’t like it. Wishes he could take it back.

“Not looking forward to meeting this Mr Fred Royston,” Lew continues, gliding over Dick’s ill-feeling.

“Well, maybe he’s good for Kathy,” Dick ventures.

“Maybe he is,” Lew replies. “But it doesn’t mean he’s going to warm to me very much. Wastrel Dad turning up for his son’s birthday after not even being there for Christmas, and you already have a chip on your shoulder from marrying another man’s woman?”

“Do you wish she was still yours?” Dick asks.

“No,” Lew says. “For god’s sake! God, I don’t know what I want.” He swallows. “Other than to see my son.”

Dick decides it’s best to let silence talk for him for now, and the two don’t speak until they reach the Pennsylvanian border.

———————

When they pull up to the house in Scranton, legs cramped from the drive, the party is clearly in full swing. Girls in party dresses, the pale hues of easter eggs. Boys, running and shoving, punching when the parents can’t see. Women, standing around the garden holding onto glasses, jackets, hats, babies, and the detritus mothers are forced to accumulate, minding it on their children’s behalf.

There are precious few men around. Well, sure looks like they’ll be sticking out like sore thumbs.

Beside him, Lewis is looking about searchingly, only to stop suddenly, head fixed in one direction like a pointer dog. “There -“ he says. Dick follows his gaze.

Sitting on the porch step, is a boy with thick dark hair. He’s wearing a plaid shirt with an open collar, and has his arms wrapped around his knees. Dick can’t say how old he is exactly, he’s never been too sharp with children. He could be four or five or six - he hasn’t sat down and done the maths in his head yet. He realises suddenly that he’s never asked Lew exactly when he got married, exactly when Kathy got pregnant, and he’s not sure if he didn’t ask because he didn’t want to hurt Lew, or he didn’t want to hurt himself. It shouldn’t be an issue knowing that Lew had another life of sorts before him, but the sight of the boy gives him a sharp feeling in his throat.

Lew trembles slightly beside him, and then strides forward eagerly. Dick hangs back by the letterbox, unwilling to intrude.

“Dad?” he can hear a small voice venture, as Lew reaches the boy and crouches down in front of him.

“Happy birthday Max!” he can hear Lew say brightly. “Oh wow, big five! Looks like a fun party, are you having a good time?”

The boy nods.

“Hey Max, I want you to meet someone.” Lew raises his head and gestures for Dick to join him. It’s hilariously reminiscent of the signals they did in the field, and Dick would crack up if he didn’t feel so anxious. “Max, this is your uncle Dick.”

Dick bends forward and shakes the boy’s hand. He tries to remember how to talk to children, how his mother and father had talked to Howard and Joan. It’s something between how the hello girls talk at the exchange, and how you talk to a dog. “It’s nice to meet you Max. I hear you’re five today. Wow!”

Max looks at him, his small dark brows creased with uncertainty. “Have I got an uncle Dick?” he says, turning to Lew.

“That you do, son,” says Lew proudly. “And not only did I get you a new uncle, I also got you a present!”

Max’s eyes widen with delight as he takes the package from Lew’s hand. “Can I open it now?” he says hopefully.

“Oh sure you can,” says Lew happily, and watches as the kid tries his best to undo the string and unstick the tape without ripping the paper. “War’s over Max, rip the paper if you want.”

“Did you give the child some kind of aircraft part?” asks Dick, as the boy takes out some kind of box containing a giant spring.

“It’s a Slinky!” Lew replies. “Toy shop told me it was the latest thing. Here - watch this!”

Lew balances the spring upright on the top porch step. “Give it a nudge, Max.” The spring bounces down the stairs like a cartoon caterpillar. Max shrieks with delight.

“Well, that’s quite something,” Dick says, when a cool female voice suddenly interrupts them.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

Kathy is wearing a dark floral dress, what his mother might call crepe - fastened down the front with a row of buttons. It’s not as slim-cut or severe as the dresses he saw on women in England or Holland, but the padded shoulders give her a powerful silhouette. She’s got a slim, pleasant face. Mid-brown hair, shoulder length. Grey eyes. She doesn’t look an awful lot like her son.

“Dick, this is Mrs Kathy Royston,” says Lew with an awkward formality.

“Dick Winters,” Dick says, shaking Kathy’s hand.

“Pleased to meet you.” She smiles with a teacher’s firmness.

“Hey kiddo, why don’t you go and play for a bit?” Lew says to Max, and the boy obligingly runs off, clutching his giant spring.

“Right,” he says to Kathy. “I’ve got a few things I could say to you but for the sake of decorum I guess I’d better restrain myself.”

“We’re all adults here, Lewis.”

Dick glances at the both of their expressions. Strained would just about cover it. “Maybe I should let you two talk in peace,” he says quietly. “I can sit in the car if you’d prefer.”

“No, stay,” Kathy says smoothly. “It’s not often you get a chance to acquaint yourself with your husband’s mistress.”

Dick feels his face start to burn.

Lew shoots her a furious look. “Like you weren’t having drinks with Mr Scranton Bank Man already.”

“I suppose I should thank you,” Kathy says. Dick isn’t sure if this remark is directed at Lewis or him. “Now I never have to attend another Christmas at your father’s horrible haunted mansion.”

Nix looks like he’s trying not to laugh.

“I’m sorry for all this, Mrs Royston,” Dick says. He looks around, casting about for something to say. “You’ve a wonderful garden. Lovely house too.” He hasn’t been in the house but it looks nice enough from the porch at least. Certainly a damned sight better than the houses he saw in Europe, with half their faces sheared off. This brick-and-siding residence is untouched by the war.

“Complimenting my house, are you? You’re a lot more polite than I imagined,” Kathy admits. She sighs, suddenly. “Well, now we’ve had that conversation. Time for cake, I suppose.”

She walks away and claps loudly, calling the children, and Dick finds himself in a crowd around a garden table, watching as Mrs Kathy Royston brings out a sponge and listening to twelve adults and twenty children sing in that high, off-key, somehow charming way that children do. The kids take their slices solemnly, thanking Mrs Royston for the cake, and for having them, and then they’re eating and running around and screaming, smudges of chocolate frosting on their faces.

Lew cheers, and puts Max on his shoulders. It happens as if he’s watching it on a newsreel.

“Would you like some cake, Mr Winters?” one of the women says. Kathy’s sister apparently. Her hair is lighter and frizzier, and her smile gap-toothed and friendly. Dick takes a small square of sponge on a napkin. “How lovely to meet a friend of Lewis’. It seems only yesterday when he was around at our house every weekend, with a parade of his college buddies coming after him. He was always such a charming man.”

“You live in Scranton?” Dick says.

“Oh, no,” the woman smiles. “Just came up for the weekend. Keith and I are staying overnight, driving back tomorrow morning.” She beams all of a sudden, waving at two little girls doing cartwheels on the lawn. “Oh, it’s always such a delight to see them grow up.”

Dick makes a noise of assent. A man wearing a brown sports jacket looks over at them, and starts walking over.

“Abigail,” he says, nodding to Kathy’s sister. He turns to Dick and offers his hand. “Fred Royston.”

“Richard Winters,” Dick says. The handshake is firm in a performative way.

Dick finds himself sizing up Kathy’s new husband. Blonde, cleanly shaven, no frown lines at all. A face you might have called handsome.

“I understand you were a paratrooper,” Royston says.

“That’s right. Airborne,” says Dick. He doesn't want to go into it, not with Lewis Nixon’s ex wife’s new husband. Doesn’t want to share the war or any glimpse, any sliver of Lew that might come with it.

“Fine job out there,” Royston says indifferently.

Fine job. Splinters of bone. Losing your unit, your helmet, your rations, your officers, your men, your ability to piss without feeling like you’re risking frostbite, never feeling clean, never sleeping, being hungry but not able to eat. Stomach churning all the time. Hating it but not knowing how to do anything else. Dick thinks about asking Royston if he served, but doesn’t.

“Exempt occupation, if you were wondering,” Royston says smoothly.

What, banking?

“Farm securities administration.”

“Important work,” Dick says. He remembers the men calling him a quaker and wants to laugh. If Royston were a quaker, he’d respect him so much more. 

“Right.” Royston claps a hand on Dick’s shoulder. “I understand it’s a long drive from New York State. Perhaps you better be going if you want to get home before the weather turns.”

Dick takes the hint, and goes to fetch Lewis, who’s sitting with the boy, back on the steps. The party’s winding down, with the children looking increasingly haggard, and Max’s little face looks overwrought and slightly teary.

“Haven’t you heard that you should always look before you leap?” Lew is gently chiding, his arm around Max’s shoulders. “Saves you falling face first in the dust. Never mind, then, you’ve only added another fine graze to your collection of bruises. Won’t do you any harm. God knows I’ve had a few in my time.”

The boy sniffles.

“He hurt himself?” Dick asks.

“Ah, just tripped when they were running around,” Lew says, and it strikes Dick that he’s got a wonderful fatherly tone in his voice. It makes him think of his own father, and an unexpected emotion wells up inside him.

“Max,” he finds himself saying, sitting down on the step carefully next to the boy. He feels like his knees are in his ears. “Your father’s done every silly thing you could possibly ever think to do, and more. Do you know he and I used to jump out of aeroplanes?”

Max turns to him, eyes wide. “Really?”

“Yep,” Lew adds. “Jumped out of a perfectly good plane. What’s more, I did it more times than anyone else. Three whole jumps! Uncle Dick was a lot more sensible. He only did it once.”

“But why?”

“Well, the army asked me to.”

“But why?”

Dick laughs. “I think he’s asking you why the Airborne exists.”

“Well,” Lew says, squeezing the boy’s shoulders. “It’s a heck of a lot faster to get a lot of soldiers out of the plane if the plane doesn’t have to land first. Helped us win the war.”

Dick gives Lew what he hopes is a communicative look.

“Max, Uncle Dick and I have to go now,” Lew says reluctantly. “But it sure was nice to see you on your birthday.”

They’re quiet again in the car on the way home.

—————-

In June, Lewis Nixon gets a letter from Scranton. His hands shake as he opens the envelope, to find a note from Kathy, folded around a couple of photographs.

He looks at the photographs first, can’t help himself - and there they both are. He and Max, Max on his shoulders. The boy’s mouth is open in a joyful shout, one of his hands is gripping Lew’s hair. He remembers how light Max had felt, how different from the last time he’d carried someone. How odd, to think he was more used to carrying men than his own child.

His own face is smiling, head turned to talk to the boy. He wonders who took the photograph.

The second photograph is a different story - Abigail took that one. He remembers her shepherding them all together, telling them to please stand still, don’t blink, get a little closer together so she can get them all in the frame, there, perfect! And click.

He’s standing next to Kathy and Max is between them, clutching Kathy’s hand. It’s an odd mirror of that other photo of him in his new uniform, with his wife and a swaddled baby. He doesn’t look at that one much anymore.

“Lewis,” the note begins, without salutations. “I hope you’re doing well in Corning. I got the photos from Maxwell’s party developed, and I thought I’d send you some. Regards, Kathy.”

There’s a PS underneath his wife’s name.

“You looked happy together, but I can’t help wondering when you’re going to hurt him.”

It’s not clear whether these last two lines are about Dick or his son.

Lewis puts the letter in his bedside drawer, and walks to the photography shop to get a frame.

Dick gets home from grocery shopping twenty minutes later. When Lew’s busy putting the tins in the cupboard, Dick walks out of the room and comes back holding the frame. Trust him to notice any change in the house.

“Oh Lew, that’s real nice,” he says, looking at the photo with an unexpected tenderness.

“Yeah, it is,” Lew says. “Kathy sent it.”

Dick looks fondly at Lew and then back at the frame. “Reminds me of a photo I’ve got with my Dad. You’ll have to look at it when you come for Christmas. I’m sure Mom’ll be all too happy to get the albums out for you.”

Christmas. The house is a little too warm to be thinking of it now, but he can’t help imagining it. Last time he had the status of Christmas orphan, there under the pretence that his family had gone to Europe for the holidays and he hadn’t followed as he’d grown a bit tired of travel. He’d been regarded with a sort of gentle pity. Now he imagines himself slotting into the family on a more permanent basis, warm spices and wine, helping Dick fetch the tree, all those wonderful greeting card things that Christmas is supposed to be.

There in the room Dick smiles beautifully and touches Lew on the shoulder, then goes to put the photo back. Lew knows he’ll put it back exactly where he found it.

He’s not sure why but he wants to cry all of a sudden.

————

In August the house is hot, too hot. They leave all the windows open whenever they can, and at night even Dick eschews his pyjamas. Also he won’t let Lew nestle against him in bed, saying it’s far too hot to do so. It shouldn’t make Lew feel sad but it does, but Dick has a habit of wrapping his arms around him in the shower (cold shower), which makes up for it, just about. As they’re standing there in the blast of cool water, Lew relishing being able to hold Dick without Dick squirming and complaining he’s about to pass out from the heat, he thinks of another time when they were drenched through. Summer in Austria, a world away now. A far less pleasant time, seeing as they were fully dressed at the time, and Lew can’t remember much of it anyway, just the odd sensation and what Dick’s told him.

He remembers something he’d said that time and smiles. Time to show his thanks to Doc Roe for being such a good sport.

Lew leaves work early so he’ll have time to spend what he thinks might be a tedious hour on the phone with directory enquiries, or Speirs at the military base if he can get hold of him. No, scrap Speirs, the long distance charges will kill him. He hopefully flips through his address book on the off-chance there’s anything there that’ll help him find Roe, and there it is, his full address, written in stubby pencil. Now he remembers copying it from the personnel files. He thanks his past self for having such foresight.

He’s about to copy the address down when he suddenly remembers that this might be Doc’s parents address, and that Doc might have made a life for himself elsewhere, as so many of them have. Directory enquiries it is then.

Mrs Roe picks up eventually, and he uses the most official tone he can muster. Something about passing on personnel files, a follow up from their time in the war, official business from Roe’s captain. Mrs Roe’s all gentle apologies. No, Eugene doesn’t live here any more, Captain. Yes, I’ll get you his new address and telephone number, just let me fetch it for you. Oh lord it’s just as well he finally got that telephone installed, heaven knows I’ve been badgering him about it for half a year. So good to hear from you Captain, now you have a pleasant day now.

He’s baffled by the amount of southern charm. He’d thought it was just a myth, something the Southerners invented to trick you over the mason dixon line, but Mrs Roe’s a good deal kinder and friendlier to a man she’s never met than the flinty, sophisticated, officious mothers he’s used to would ever be. Or maybe it’s just his mother and his wife who are like that, that’s all he’s got to go off. He’s only met Mrs Winters once, and while she seems kind, he can’t help feeling it was just because she was feeling sorry for him.

He writes the new address and number down, when he has the thought that he ought to check it. Make sure it’s really the Doc and not a number for a crawfish boiling bar or whatever the hell they have down there.

“Hello?” A male voice answers, sounding a little distracted and sleepy.

“Hello, is this Eugene Roe’s residence?”

“It is,” admits the man, sounding a little reluctant. It strikes Lew that the voice on the other end isn’t Southern at all, and that he’s done stuffed up and rung someone else. He checks the number again and frowns.

“He’s not in right now. I can take a message for him if ya like?” the man says again.

Then it hits him. He _knows_ that voice.

“Heffron? Is that you?”

The man squeaks suddenly, like he’s been stepped on. “Uh- uh, who is this again?”

“Captain Nixon,” Lew says, smiling a little to himself.

“Oh god cap, you scared the shit out of me!” Babe says, and he can hear the relief coming down the line like it’s the sound of running water. “Christ, I thought it was the police or somethin’ -“

“Not the police as far as I know,” says Lew, laughing. “Just that when I ring Louisiana, I’m not expecting to hear Philly’s favourite son on the line. How you holding up anyway, Babe?”

“Doing great, captain,” Babe says cheerily.

“You don’t have to call me captain anymore, you know,” Lew reminds him.

“Oh yeah, right. How you doing then Mr Nixon?”

“Oh to icy hell with that, Heffron. Glad to hear from you.”

“Glad to hear from you too,” says Babe, and it sounds like he means it. “Oh, anyway - what did you wanna talk to Gene about?”

“Oh nothing,” says Lew. “Well, it’s a surprise, so don’t let him know I called. He _definitely_ lives there and you’re not just pranking me somehow?” he adds with mock suspicion.

“How would I even do that?” Babe protests. “Last time I checked this was a Louisiana number. You forget we’re not all that fuckin’ smart.”

“Just checking. Well anyway, take care of yourself Babe. Don’t cause too much trouble, and make sure to draw the curtains at night, if you know what I mean.”

“Will do.”

He puts the phone down. Wow. Babe and the doc, who would have thought it? The new information makes him like Doc Roe all the more, although he keeps the note brief of too much superfluous flattery, just in case Roe gets the wrong idea and thinks he’s trying to woo him.

_Dear Gene,_

_Just a little thanks for lying and saying I had the flu that one time in Austria._

  * _Lewis “not your captain anymore so just call me Lewis now” Nixon._



He thinks about it for a minute and then adds his telephone number to the bottom of the card, fetches his check book, tears off another sheet of notepaper and begins writing another note.

The door opens and Dick walks in, hanging his hat on the coat rack. (Lewis is fonder of putting his on any available flat surface, but Dick won’t stand for hall tables after the dent he got in his leg from walking into one in Austria.)

“Hey Lew, you left early,” Dick says, bending down to kiss Lew’s head.

“Didn’t know you noticed what time I leave,” Lew says. He signs the note with a flourish. “Right! That’s done. Now I have to call directory enquiries, _again.”_

“What exactly are you doing?” Dick says warily.

“Organising to send some flowers to Doc Roe,” Lew says.

“Why, are some congratulations in order?” Dick says, looking baffled. His face then falls. “Or condolences?

“Oh no, nothing like that! It’s just a promise I made to myself back in Austria, when he lied about me being laid up with the flu, when I was actually just sick with a hangover and a serious case of lovesickness over one Richard Winters.”

Dick grins.

“And it’s about a year to the day when we first got together,” Lew adds, although it’s a funny thing to say, considering that they were together in a way for three years before that.

“What, you didn’t know me from a bar of soap before then?” Dick teases.

“Well, together together. You know what I mean. Oh, here’s one for you -“ he says, licking the stamp. “I got Doc Roe’s address and number from his mother, and I decided to call him just to make sure it was the right one. And Babe Heffron answered.”

“Babe Heffron?” Dick’s eyes widen in a delighted kind of shock.

“Suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised about it, considering I saw them necking in a foxhole near Foy. I just thought it was kid stuff, but it looks like they made a go of it.”

Dick’s eyes are still as wide as saucers. “Well,” he says, “I guess we’re not the only ones then.”

“I guess we’re not,” says Lew, and then has to stop fiddling about with stamps because the look on Dick’s face is still so pleased and wondering that Lew has to stand up and kiss him right there.

After calling directory enquiries and getting a number for a New Orleans florist that does delivery, Lew calls, places an order, gets the address and packages up all the notes and the check and the card into the envelope, double checks the address on the envelope and then he’s finally ready to post it. He feels light as he closes the mailbox. He feels fucking fantastic, actually.

The weekend passes in companionable loveliness. Lew and Dick go out for a drive to a nearby lake. Dick swims, Lew sits on the dock and puts his legs in the water. Dick tries to teach Lew how to fish but after fifteen minutes, Lew declares he doesn’t have the patience, and reads Dick’s book instead. Dick’s been working his way through the Austen canon, and Lew interrupts Dick’s contemplative gaze at the water to tell him multiple times that Emma Woodhouse needs to stop being such a meddling so and so, and that setting people up never worked out the way you wanted it anyway, and is Mrs Bates ever going to shut up about the fucking apples? Dick shushes him, saying the fish don’t want to hear Lew’s prattle. They get no bites but Lew’s perfectly happy anyway.

When they drive up to the house, they hear something.

“Isn’t that the phone?” Lew says, frowning at the door.

Odd. Dick’s rung his mother once or twice and Lew’s used the phone to make calls - Gene (or Babe) most recently, but nobody’s ever called them at the house before.

“I’ll get it,” calls Dick, clearly anticipating Lew’s sudden rush for the phone and inevitable tripping, or the time when he grabbed at the handset so fast that it did a graceful flip in the air and smacked him directly in the face.

Lew follows him into the house, and sees Dick already at the phone, his face furrowed in concentration.

“Hello, Dick Winters speaking. Yes. I see.” Dick looks wildly at Lew, makes the _get over here_ hand signal. “Yes, I’ll get him for you.”

Lew takes the phone, his hands sweaty on the bakelite. “Hello?” he says in a low voice.

“Lewis.” It’s just like Kathy to not even bother with a proper greeting. “I’m ringing to let you now -“ a deep, crackly sigh, “that Fred and I have decided that it’s best that Maxwell doesn’t see you anymore.”

A horrible howling pain opens up inside him.

He can’t look at Dick, who’s still hovering beside him. All possible words seem stuck in his throat.

“Wh-“ is all he manages to choke out.

“I’m sorry, Lewis,” Kathy continues.

“You’re sorry?” Lew finally manages to stammer back. “You’re fucking sorry?”

“I’ll wait in the other room,” Dick says softly, but Lew reaches out and grabs his arm.

“No - stay,” he snarls, and Dick, bless him, obeys.

“Lewis…” starts Kathy again.

“How does Fred get to decide this? How does Fred have any fucking say in anything -“

“Lewis, he’s my husband now.” Another sigh. “Not you. Last time I checked you were away for most of Maxwell’s life anyway. Felt like I was a widow.”

“Yeah, of course I was away, I was on a fucking battlefield getting my head nearly blown off!”

“He barely knows you,” Kathy pleads, sounding as if she’s trying to convince herself. “It’s worse for him to only see you twice a year than to never see you at all. You can’t confuse him like that.”

“Kathy, if you think I’m just going to throw up my hands and say “yes, that’s right, the almighty hand of Fred has now declared that I’m never going to visit my son ever again” then you’re even more cracked than I thought,” Lew says angrily. Dick mutely puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Lew,” says Kathy warningly, “don’t fight me on this, please.”

“Or what?”

“Or we’ll go to court and sue for full custody. Don’t think we don’t have a better case.”

The reality of this hits him, all sick and rotten in his stomach. Kathy doesn’t even have to dig to find dirt on him. A judge will take one look at him and declare him devious and reprehensible, he’ll have to pay court fees and might even end up in jail.

“You win then,” Lew said. “Well, you always did.”

“Lewis, I wish it wasn-“

Lewis slams the phone down, shrugs Dick off and runs out the door.

Two minutes on the phone, that’s all it’s taken, for him to lose his son forever. He only wishes it was that easy to forget him.

—————

It’s a sleepless night for Dick.

First, there’s the not knowing where Lew is. He’d usually look for a bar, but it’s Sunday and most of them won’t be open. He curses himself for not running after Lew as soon as the door banged, but at the time he’d been oddly frozen, unable to move, trying to figure out what had just happened. It doesn’t seem right, but he knows one instant can radically alter the course of your life, and this phone call may as well have been a bullet.

Maybe Lew wants to be alone right now, anyway.

He paces the house. It’s coming up to 1900 hours - _seven pm_ , he reminds himself, you’re not a soldier now - and he realises he should probably eat something, but he’s not hungry. He forces himself to have some toast, and it’s sawdust in his mouth.

What brought this on, exactly? Why would Kathy send Lew a photograph of him and Max, and then only weeks later tell Lew he’s forbidden to see him? He doesn’t know Kathy that well but despite remembering Lew’s drunken description of her as _a bitch_ , it doesn’t seem like she’d be capable of such cruelty.

At 10 pm he walks around the neighbourhood, squinting into the darkness, but he can’t find Lew.

At 11 pm he considers calling the police, but reminds himself that Lew’s a full grown man, and the police are the last people he wants involved in their business. It’s weird to think of himself as a criminal, but he supposes he technically is.

At 12 pm he’s shimmering with anxiousness, but bone tired, and collapses into bed. Lew will be there in the morning, he hopes.

At 5 am he wakes up and tiptoes out into the living room. With a rush of relief, he sees a slumped form on the sofa. Lew’s face is underneath his bended arm, and there’s a sticky splash of vomit all over the cushions and down to the floor. Christ, Lew. He forces himself to stay calm enough to take Lew’s pulse. Thank god, he’s breathing steadily, although it sounds heavily and sluggish. He gets a dampened kitchen towel and wipes Lew’s face, but he can’t do much about the sofa without moving him, and disturbing him doesn’t seem the right idea right now.

At 5.45 he goes back to bed, crossing his fingers that this will all magically resolve itself by the morning, even though he knows it won’t.

At 8 am he hears Lew retching into the toilet. At least he made it that far.

“Don’t,” groans Lew, as Dick walks into the bathroom and starts brushing his teeth. “Don’t fucking say - anything,”

“I wasn’t going to.” Dick gives him a sad look and leaves for work.

He tells Lew’s head of department that Lewis has come down with a nasty case of food poisoning and can’t be in today. The guy gives him a funny look, but Dick keeps his face steady and calm, and is rewarded with the guy eventually giving him a nod, and a “thanks for letting me know, Winters.”

He doesn’t know how, but he somehow manages to get through the goddamn day. He’s begun to build up a good rapport with his coworkers and they notice that he’s withdrawn and looks tired.

“You get food poisoning too?” says Peggy, as she comes looking for a new employee’s personnel file. “You don’t look too good, maybe you should go home early.”

“I’m fine,” he says tiredly, wondering how much Peggy has guessed. How much she knows, how much they all know. “But thank you for asking.”

When he gets home, Lew’s sitting in the front room, staring at nothing in particular. The sofa’s been sponged down, the floor cleaned.

“How you holding up?” Dick asks.

Lew looks at him as if he’s not really seeing him. “Dick,” says Lew, his voice low and bitter. “If I ever drink like that again, I want you to hit me.”

It’s the worst request he’s ever heard in his life.

“Oh Lew,” he says sadly. “Oh Lew -“

He walks over and puts a hand on Lew’s forehead. Lew slumps against his leg, and he curls his fingers in Lew’s hair. 

“Lew,” Dick says, trying to be steady. “I don’t want to hit you.”

“I mean it,” comes that low, miserable voice again.

“Whenever you ask me to hurt you, it’s because you’re already hurting.” He strokes Lew’s hair, and feels an arm curl around his leg. “Why would I want to add to that?”

He thinks he hears Lew crying.

“Come on, I’ll get you a glass of water,” Dick says, gently prising himself out of Lew’s grip.

“No, stay,” says Lew thickly. “Please.”

He kneels down, and draws Lew into his arms.

—————

Lew lets himself be put to bed and sleeps fitfully, until he wakes at 8 pm with a ravenous hunger. He and Dick aren’t much in the way of cooks, but Lew can probably manage some eggs now the alcohol’s worn off. Dick’s been trying to train himself - Lew sometimes spots him reading The Joy Of Cooking, which always makes him smile - always studying, always attempting to better himself - but a lot of the meals in there are for families of four or take a couple of hours to cook. Not something that suits two guys who both work.

Dick’s sitting in his chair again, reading. “Oh,” he says when Lew comes out. “Are you hungry? I wasn’t sure if you wanted anything.”

“Don’t trouble yourself, I’m just going to fry myself a couple of eggs,” says Lew, trying to smile. “God, we’re a fucking pair, aren’t we?”

“What do you mean?” says Dick, closing the book.

“Oh, well, sometimes I think it was silly to think that two guys living with each other was gonna work. Neither of us did home economics, for one.”

Dick glares at him. “Yeah, well what would you rather be doing?”

“I don’t know, maybe we should get a housekeeper.”

“A housekeeper, Lew?” Dick raises an eyebrow. “Look, I’m trying, and we both know we can’t do that, without setting up a fake bedroom and an extra bed and cooking up some cock and bull story about how our English wives both died in the blitz and we’re sad impotent war buddies who have to live together because nobody else will have us.” He looks oddly furious.

“I’m sorry, I’m just in a bad mood.” Lew sighs, and cracks the eggs directly into the pan. They sizzle gratifyingly, and he feels a small sense of achievement as he watches them cook. Liquid to solid, clear to opaque, raw to cooked. It’s a tiny bit of chemistry, right there in the pan. “Huh. You ever realise how neat it is watching eggs cook?”

“Lew, are you still drunk?”

“No, just having some thoughts I guess.”

“Lew, for what it’s worth,” says Dick, who has now left his chair and is leaning in the doorway, watching Lew watch the eggs, “I don’t have anywhere else I’d rather be than here. With you. And I’m not going to run off just because you’ve had bad news.”

It’s more than bad news but he can tell that Dick doesn’t want to put words to it. Probably won’t bring it up until he does.

He flips one egg and it breaks, half of it flipping, half of it staying put. Suddenly he’s filled with an overwhelming need to cry, for the second time that day. Stupid fucking eggs. Imagine being set off by _eggs._

“Dick,” he says thickly, as Dick wordlessly comes over and takes over turning the eggs, “Kathy’s right. It’s only a matter of time before I hurt you.”

“What are you talking about?” says Dick, kissing him on the forehead. “There. If I recall, that’s how you like them. Shall I make you some toast.”

“I’d love that.”

———————-

A couple of days later, Dick notices that the photo on the bureau is no longer there. He doesn’t say anything about it. He knows what it is to hurt, to have nightmares, to shake and long for tears but the tears don’t bring relief, only more hopelessness - but he’s never had a child and can’t imagine just beginning to get to know your son before he’s snatched away from you.

Now Lew’s got two spectres of pain inside him. At least for him, it’s only the war.

——————-

He’s awake now, staring at the ceiling. Huh. He’s never really looked at that plaster moulding. Seems overly elaborate for a company house, aspirational even. He wonders how long ago the house was built, maybe 20 years ago. His mother’s time. Thinking of her seems sad for some reason. He was sure that when she gave birth to him, she never thought he’d have to go to war. Never thought he’d end up wrong, somehow, or at least anything other than normal. Her quiet, bookish son, whom she’s never done anything but love.

He feels Lew shift beside him, a roll of his shoulders.

He reminds himself that he doesn’t want anything else out of his life than what he has now, that this is more of a life than so many of the men got to have, but it’s hard somehow.

“You awake?” Lew murmurs in the dark.

“Yeah. Can’t sleep. I miss you.”

“How can you miss me when I’m right here?” Lew’s voice is scratchy.

“I don’t know. I’m in my own head and I can’t get out.”

“Dick, you think too much,” says Lew tiredly. He rolls against him and wraps his arm around Dick. “Sometimes it’s better to just..be.”

“Intro to philosophy?” Dick says, smiling. Lew gives him a little squeeze.

He becomes conscious of Lew’s body pressing against him, his thigh between his thigh, the way Lew’s face is brushing against his back. The way Lew is pressed against his ass, for one. Don’t think. He’s getting all kinds of ideas, he can’t help it.

He moves against Lew, just a little, just a tilt of his hips, a shifting of his leg.

“You still want to do that with me?” Lew says cautiously.

“Of course I still want to do that with you.”

“Oh god, alright then.” Lew’s sounding a bit more awake now. He’s running his hand along Dick’s side, over the curve of his hip, towards his cock. Dick gasps as he feels Lew touch him. “So, what do you want to do?”

“Anything. Everything.”

“Be specific, Winters,” growls Lew, his hand whispering across Dick’s thigh.

“It’d be real nice if you - oh god!” His breathing is a little ragged now. “If you fucked me.”

Lew’s hand stills. “Oh, ok.” He sighs. Dick turns in his grasp as best he can. Damn it, now he’s all fired up, and he wants Lew so badly and yet - well, he can’t help feeling hurt.

“We don’t have to do that if you don’t like it,” Dick says, “it’s just the way you’re behind me like that, I can’t help thinking of it.”

Lew makes a strange noise. Strained, somehow. He reaches over and turns on the bedside lamp. Now Dick can see that he looks anxious, almost virginal, like he’s suddenly got cold feet about being with another guy. “It’s not that - it’s just that - um, I don’t -“

A horrible thought occurs to Dick. A reason why Lew might not want to be touched.

“Oh Christ Lew, did something happen?”

Lew looks confused for a minute, then realisation dawns. “Oh no! Nothing, nothing’s happened. I’m fine.”

“Are you thinking it’s wrong?” Dick says. Another horrible thought now, the fact that by being here, by him being with Lew, he’s probably cost him the chance to ever see his son. It doesn’t seem fair, it wasn’t like he had much say in the matter. Both Kathy and Lew had agreed to have him there, and yet - well, was the mere sight of Lew keeping company with a man - friendly company for all anyone knew - enough to ruin everything? Fuck. Fuck all of it.

“No, Dick, it’s just that….” Lew swallows, eyes downcast. “When I’m the one on top, I can’t help worrying I’m going to hurt you.”

Shit. That explained a lot. How gentle he was, how hesitant, when he always seemed to have so much more fun the other way around. He’d always just assumed it was preference, but to find out that Lew was afraid -

“Oh Lew,” he says, reaching for his hand. “Oh Lew, you never have.” Lew mutely takes it. It’s a small thing but it feels so comforting, having his hand in his. “But do you like it?”

“I do, but I worry.”

“Have - wait, have I ever hurt you?” 

“No! Definitely not. No, nothing’s better than that. But when it’s you - I don’t know -”

“Lew, you won’t hurt me. I’m not a glass figurine.” Dick kisses him, and Lew responds, dipping his head to meet him. His mouth is warm and sweet on his, a true lover’s kiss. “God, to think that all this time you were worried about this.” He strokes Lew’s hair, runs a hand along his cheek.

Lew’s got his eyes closed, but as Dick touches his face he suddenly grins. “I’ve really created an arousing mood, haven’t I? God, you’re begging me to rail you and I’m there twisting in the wind, worried I’m going to break your ass.”

“Well a mood’s something we can work on,” Dick says, tracing a hand down Lew’s chest. “It certainly doesn’t take much to get me going. The sight of you, for one.”

Lew raises one of those magnificent brows. “You still think I’m worth looking at?”

“More than that. Seeing you naked, sitting on the bed…I see it every day and yet it gets me all flustered.”

“Yeah, well seeing _you_ gets me going, especially now that you’re not wearing those sears catalogue pyjamas.”

“Oh you love them,” says Dick, rolling over onto his stomach. He moves his hips, raising his ass a little, and waits for Lew to make a move.

The hand on his lower back makes him arch, and then Lew’s reaching down lower to put his hands all over his ass and thighs. “Now don’t be shy about this,” Dick warns, “I actually _am_ begging you to rail me.”

“Cheeky,” purrs Lew. He feels the sudden sharp sensation of Lew smacking him. Oh god, it shouldn’t be hot but it its. He’s as hard as a fucking rock now. Can’t stop himself from moving against the bed, desperate for sensation.

“You like that?” Lew says.

“Fuck,” Dick says, trembling a little. “God, I want you.”

“Do you now?” Lew murmurs, and he’s reaching around Dick’s hips and stroking him, and Dick’s moving into position, and he wants it so badly, he wants Lew inside him, he wants him to finish inside him, he wants them to be locked together -

“Oh god, just fuck me already.”

“Ha! That’s my line,” Lew says, voice amused, and sounding more than a little dangerous. “God, here am I doing exactly the same shit, teasing you so much you’re about to blow a load before I’ve even done anything.”

“You love it,” Dick says raggedly. “You love it when I do it.”

“It’s my turn to be an absolute cock tease now, get used to it,” says Lew, running his hands all over Dick, and then there’s the merciful relief of hearing him reach for the nightstand. From there, it happens so fast. A slick finger inside him, pushing at him, him opening, him begging for more, and then the heavy slide of Lew’s cock, and it’s filling him and he’s so fucking full, he feels himself stretch around it, and it’s almost too much, especially since this time Lew’s grabbing him full force by the hips, no trepidation this time. It’s almost too much but it’s not, it feels right, it feels whole, especially when Lew starts moving in him, and he’s being fucked by Lewis Nixon, and it’s better than it’s ever been before -

Lew’s fingers in his hair - tugging a little. Lew’s hot mouth, biting him. The weight of Lew as he lets himself drop on top of him, and now he’s lying down, feeling Lew’s chest against his back, his mouth on his neck, on his ear. Lew’s thrusting into him and it feels so good, so criminally good -

He can hear Lew panting now, ragged, sweaty. “Oh god, oh fuck - “

“Inside me -“ he manages to say, overwhelmed by the sensation, so strong he can barely stand it, and then he feels the sudden burst of heat, the swelling of Lew finishing in him, the moans of him, so raw, so desperate, the hot slick sound of their bodies meeting, as Lewis reaches downwards. He cries out, cries out and comes into Lewis Nixon’s hand.

“Oh Lew,” Dick says, rolling over to rest his head on Lew’s chest, which rises and falls so rapidly at first, and then calms to a gentler motion. “That was wonderful Lew, it really was.”

Lewis fairly glows.

————————-

Time moves slowly and yet too fast.

They’re in Corning for another year, when Lew gets restless. The house seems too small for their future now. They go on drives, scouting, thinking of what to do, when Lew hits upon a brilliant idea.

“Where are we going?” Dick says, as Lew drives out of Corning, onto a country road, slowing down as he enters Painted Post. He turns down one of the first streets they see, and then he’s pulling up in a gravel parking lot in front of a moderately sized industrial building. “Building Supplies and Timber” reads a sign on the roof.

“Here!” says Lew proudly.

“What is it?” Dick says. There’s a for sale sign on a post outside. “Do you want some building supplies? It doesn’t look like anyone’s here.”

“Well,” Lew says, hoping that Dick will be susceptible to his idea and won’t baulk at the suddenness of it all. “I know that you’ve said farming is an uncertain business…”

“I have,” Dick admits. “It does still hold some attractions though. Call it the quiet life.”

“Well yes,” Lew says.

“But I’ve been thinking lately,” Dick says, “that maybe farming isn’t something you’d be interested in doing. And I don’t want to make you do something that’s going to make you all…itchy, like you’ve got a bee stuck up your ass.”

“It’d be preferable to avoid that sensation, yes,” Lew says drily. “Or is this your weird Pennsylvania way of flirting with me?” He blasts Dick with an expression of unfathomable sauciness.

“Oh get on with it,” says Dick, giving Lew a little shove.

“Fine, then. Here was I just trying for some light playful banter. Anyway, you’re right. Turns out I don’t really want to do farming, although if that’s what you really want, I’ll do it. Can’t be a worse idea than when you wanted to go to Japan for some goddamn reason and I was still stupid enough to want to follow you.” He gives Dick a fond look. “God, how did you not realise I was in love with you?”

“I don’t know,’ Dick said. “I guess it wasn’t written in any of the field manuals.”

“Affairs of the heart never are,” Lew replies. Dick gives him the _get on with it_ hand signal. “Ok! So you know how a couple of weeks I went to the library with you and I was scouring through Corning’s meagre offerings when I found Jack London and I thought “hey I haven’t read Jack London since I was 10” and in a fit of nostalgia I borrowed all of his books including his collected essays, which of course I hadn’t bothered to read at the time -“

“Where is this going exactly? Are you suggesting we become gold prospectors or something, because it’s a bit late for that. I think all the surface level and alluvial gold is gone, Nix. You’ll have to think of something else.”

“Oh, I love it when you call me Nix. Recalls your oblivious days when you were joined to me at the hip and kept rubbing up against me but hadn’t even thought about why. So, I was thinking about the klondike gold rush, and one of the things that struck me was how expensive everything was. One egg was fifty bucks, if you can believe that. Fifty bucks in 1900s money!”

“I assume there’s a point to this musing,” Dick says. “Cause I sure feel like I’m hearing a story from my old Grandpa and midway through he’ll forget where he’s going with it and ask for a cup of tea poured into a saucer cause that’s the only way he’ll drink it.”

“Cup of tea poured into a saucer?”

“Yeah, it’s an old man thing. Don’t ask.”

“Well, as I was saying, the thing with the gold rush is most of the miners didn’t make a lot of money. They had to pay all these license fees and equipment fees and supply fees and then the food was really expensive and the transport was, and then there were - anyway. Whereas the people who actually did make money were the people who ran the stores. They had a captive market and none of the risk. Miners are always going to need tools, and you get more money selling to them than you do actually doing the mining yourself.”

“That’s a fair point,” Dick says, “but we’re not actually in mining country right now, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“I’m getting to it. From the way I see it, farming is like mining. Maybe you have a bad year and all of your crops die. Maybe your grain auger breaks or your silo collapses or your cows come down with a case of the sickening blight or whatever you call it, but the bills are still coming in. You still have to buy the equipment and the seeds and the chemicals and everything else, so I was thinking that rather than having a farm, we should have a feed store instead. And here’s our feed store!” He gestures grandly to the building.

Dick looks surprised. “You know, that’s actually not a bad idea.”

“Well good, because I already bought it.”

“You what?!” Dick splutters. “Nix, you’re going to have to learn to be less impulsive.”

“Says who?” Lew replies, grinning broadly at the look of Dick’s face. “It’s worked out pretty well for me so far.”

—————————

————————-

Maxwell doesn’t think of his father much these days. There are only a few times when he did.

He’s nearly five and he’s been in Scranton a few months now, with that man his mother is calling his Pa. He’s not my real pa, he thinks. He remembers another man, with dark hair like him, and this man is blonde.

Now he’s five. He’s so excited to wake up and finally be five, old enough to go to big school in September, almost more excited about that than the party and the presents, excited enough to not mind when his little sister’s crying wakes him up before the sun. He lies in the dark, and doesn’t even mind Lucy’s hiccupy wails, because he’s five now and now he’s got more time to be five.

“Maxie,” his Mom says in the morning, after the morning chorus of “happy birthday Max!” and opening presents, two picture books that look so colourful he almost wants to eat them, but he won’t because he’s too big for that now.

“Yes Mom?” He concentrates on eating his toast and jelly quick fast before it gets cold. “Who’ll be coming to my party? Will Bill come? And Aunty Abigail?”

“Yes, dear.”

“And Grandpa and Grandma? And Nanna and pop?”

“Grandpa and Grandma won’t be coming,” his mother says, a funny tight look on her face. “They live much too far away.”

“Oh,” he says. “Can we go and see them?” He always loves going to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. There are these stone monster statues there, and a giant clock with a big swinging ball called a pendulum, and so many rooms that you can play hide and seek without even going outside, although if you get caught in the wrong room you get in trouble. And there are always cakes and visits to the seaside and the fair and one time the circus, although that was a bit scary and he’s not sure he wants to see it again.

“Maxie,” says his mom, and he wishes she wouldn’t call him that because it’s not a name you should have when you’re already this big. “Someone special is coming to see you today.”

“Who?” He nibbles around the crust of his toast.

“You remember your Dad, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure.” He remembers there being someone. Someone with a big laugh and a scratchy face whom he liked but was a bit scared of.

“Well, he’s coming to visit.” His mother doesn’t smile, like you would for a nice surprise. Maybe she’s a bit scared of Dad too.

———————-

When Dad arrives he has another man with him.

“Oh, that must be your father’s friend from the war!” Aunt Abigail says, looking interested.

Max is surprised that adults have friends too. He has his own best friend, Bill from down the street, who plays marbles with him.

He’s shy at first but Dad remembers him and he’s got the same laugh, although he’s less scratchy today. The other man is his new uncle. He didn’t know you could get a new uncle but if an adult says so it must be true.

He sees Uncle Dick talking to his pa, and wonders what they’re saying, but he doesn’t go over and find out because Dad is swinging him in the air and laughing and he wonders why he can’t just have two Dads around, or just his real one, because Dad’s better than Pa. He’s not sure about the uncle yet but he must be nice, or Dad wouldn’t have brought him, would he?

—————-

He didn’t realise the bike would go that fast when Pa took the training wheels off, and when he tries to turn the corner he misses and smashes into the milk bottles on the porch. It hurts, and there’s milk everywhere, and now there’s blood in the milk. He screams for Mom but he gets Pa.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Pa snaps. “Why didn’t you look where you were going?”

He’s gotten scraped before and he knows the way the beads of blood settle on a graze, but this is too much blood. It’s running down his arm into his hand. He wails, it’s too horrible. He wants Pa to pick him up and carry him inside to the bathroom like Mom would do but Pa’s never picked him up before.

Pa grabs him by the arm, the hurt one, and wrenches him to his feet. He says something rough that Max knows must be a bad word, but doesn’t say anything else, just pulls Max towards the bathroom and tells him to sit on the edge of the bath, while he gets a bandage.

He’s still crying when Pa winds the bandage around his arm, still crying when Pa ties it so tightly that he worries his fingers can’t move.

“That’s enough crying,” Pa says. “You’re all in one piece, you’ll be fine.”

“Where’s Mom?” he says. “I want Mom!”

“Your mother’s busy.” Pa’s busy washing his hands now. “If you’re going to tear around like that you shouldn’t be surprised when you get hurt.”

“I don’t like you!” says Max, suddenly feeling a great sense of injustice. “You’re not nice!”

“I don’t care,” Pa replies.

Max stares at him, shocked. This isn’t what adults are supposed to say, they’re supposed to say “never mind”, or “I’m here now” or “let me kiss it better.” He’s sure his other Dad would have done a better job. He _knows_ it. When he fell over and grazed himself his Dad was kind, not like Pa - and though he doesn’t know Uncle Dick very well, Uncle Dick has to be better than Pa as well.

Fine. If Pa doesn’t want him, he has other people that do.

“If Mom’s not here,” he declares, full of conviction, “then I want to live with Dad and Uncle Dick instead.”

Pa stops glancing down at his hands and glares at Max. His eyes are white hot, and his face is all thin lines and meanness.

“You want to stay with those faggots? Fine. Be my guest. Hop back on your bike, you can get yourself there.”

——————

Max goes to play with his trains in his room. His arm hurts too much to ride the bike, and he doesn’t know where Dad lives anyway. Maybe things will get better when Mom gets home.

  
He hears the front door bang, the sound of someone putting down some bags, bumping the pram over the front step, and he’s about to go out and show Mom his arm, when he hears raised voices in the kitchen - Mom’s and Pa’s. He carefully opens the door to his room with his good arm, pads down the stairs and hides behind the kitchen door, listening.

“I cleaned the kid up but he was being a real sissy about the whole thing-“ comes Pa’s voice. “Wouldn’t stop crying.”

“He’s five!” says his mother, sounding angry. “Of course he’s going to cry, what do you expect?”

“You should have heard what he said.” Pa’s voice is low and mean, like a dog growling.

“What?”

“Said he’d rather live with your former husband.”

“So? He was probably just upset.” There’s the bump of groceries being put away, and he hears his mother sigh.

“You need to be careful, Kathy. That boy might start getting the wrong idea about things.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, it takes some kind of mother to let her son hang around faggots.”

“Fred - for christ’s sake! He’s Max’s father! You make it sound like I went down to Greenwich Village and picked up a whole bunch of sailors and took them home to play horsie with my son. Lewis is Max’s _father_ and he might not be perfect but neither of any of us.” Her voice drops to a dangerous sounding lowness. “He was at D-day, he’s _more_ than proved himself as a man, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Don't start with that,” snarls Pa. “We couldn’t all go, the country would have crumbled into fucking _dust_ without the work I was doing. You have _no idea -_ “

Their voices get louder and he feels he’s heard enough.

———————-

A couple of days later he and Mom are going to the park, Mom wheeling baby Lucy in the pram. He wishes he could ride his bike but the wheel is a bit twisted. Mom says the milkman made her pay extra for the broken bottles, but not to worry because the most important thing is that he’s Ok, and don’t worry about Pa. He’s doing his best, Mom says, but when he came along you were already grown and he had to start being a Pa really fast. Is that why Dad is better at it than Pa, because he knew Max when he was even smaller than Lucy? Maybe that’s the key, even if he didn’t see Dad for years, and to him the world was just Mom and Grandma and Grandpa and aunty Abigail. But he knew Dad was out there somewhere. Grandma would show him photos in the big grey album.

“Mom?” he says, as they arrive at the park and Mom goes over to the bench near the duckpond, where she’ll sit with Lucy, and probably talk to some of the other mothers when they show up.

“Yes, dear?”

“Mom, what’s a faggot?”

“Shhh!” Mom hisses. She whips her head around from side to side suddenly, looking like a dog who’s just heard a whistle. “Don’t say that word in public.” No one’s there, just a gardening man on the other side of the park, clipping a bush with a big pair of shears. Her face relaxes, and she sits down, smoothing her skirt.

“But Mom,” he says determinedly. “What does it mean?”

“Where did you hear it?” says Mom. “Was it something Pa said?”

Max nods.

Mom sighs. “Here, Maxie, sit down.” She bends down, and he feels the tickle of her hair on his face. He can smell her talcum powder. She takes his hand, and he admires how clean and cool her fingers are against his hot ones.

She takes a deep breath. “Max, it’s a bad word.”

“Ok,” he says. “But why did Pa say it then?”

“He was cross.”

“What does it mean?”

“Oh hell -“ she says softly, looking over the duck pond. He’s sure he’s not supposed to hear that. She turns back to him. “Maxie,” she says slowly, carefully. “Pa doesn’t like Dad very much. He called him that word because - it’s a word some people use when they don’t like someone.”

“Oh, I see,” says Max, although he doesn’t. “I don’t understand.”

“He said that,” says Mom, with a sharp breath, “because Dad lives with his friend.”

“Uncle Dick?” Max asks.

“Yes, Uncle Dick.”

“Is it bad that he lives with Uncle Dick?”

“Some people would say so,” Mom says. “But - well, something happened to Dad during the war.”

“What happened?”

“Sometimes men come back from the war and they’ve gone through something nobody can understand. It’s like, well, you know when you play marbles with Bill?”

Max nods, not following.

“Well, Bill’s really good at marbles, but I’m not. You wouldn’t want me to play marbles with you, or Lucy, or Grandma.”

He giggles at this, imagines Grandma crouched down on the floor in her narrow suit with the bumpy fabric.

“Well it’s like that with Dad. He went to the war, and it was very scary, but his friend was with him. And now only his friend understands what that’s like -“ Mom looks away at this, “and I don’t.”

Her voice has gone strange now, like it has a bubble in it.

“Oh,” Max says.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this anymore,” says Mom, almost to herself. She rummages in the pram. “Look, I bought some bread. Do you want to feed the ducks?”

He loses the next bit of the afternoon absorbed in the duckpond, and the mallards diving and dabbling in it.

———————-

One evening he’s done his toilet and teeth and he’s tucked into bed, listening to his mother read him and Lucy Goodnight Moon, when Pa gets home. Mom leaves the room mid-book, and they have a murmuring conversation downstairs. Storytime must be over, he supposes, because the conversation is going on for an awfully long time and even when it finishes, she doesn’t come back. A prickle of thirst starts in his throat, and he decides to go and get a drink of water.

When he walks into the kitchen he can see his mother standing by the hall phone, twisting the cord around one finger. He stands on tiptoe but he can’t reach the cupboards where the glasses are. He goes into the bathroom to fetch his step stool and is walking back into the kitchen when he hears a strange sobbing sound.

His mother’s still by the phone, but she’s hung up, and by the trembling movement of her shoulders, he thinks she might be crying.

————————-

When he’s 18, he finds the photos.

He’s not snooping - only looking for his mother’s glasses. Mom has recently gotten her eyes checked, and can’t seem to get the hang of needing to carry her glasses around with her, or at the very least put them in a safe place. Well she does, but that safe place is usually so safe that even she can’t find them.

“Max?” Mom calls from the lounge room, where she’s turning over all the sofa cushions and rummaging through the magazines on the coffee table. “You find them yet?”

“Not yet,” Max says. “Just going to look in the guest room.”

The guest room has become a depository of junk over the years. They originally had it for Abigail to come visit, or his grandmother - Mom’s mom, not Pa’s, nor those other grandparents he hasn’t seen for years, the ones who lived in that Addams family house. He remembers the house more than the grandparents. But now Grandma has died, and Abigail doesn’t come so frequently now that he and Lucy are older and have long since passed the need for babysitting.

“The guest room?” calls Mom. “Why would they be in there?”

“I don’t know,” Max yells back, “but it’s worth a look. They’re not in one of your purses are they?”

“I already checked the purses!”

There’s his Mom’s old bedside table. It’s a utilitarian affair, pretty plain and cheap, something his mother replaced as soon as Pa got a promotion and was able to afford a house redecoration without too much hire purchase. That was when they got their TV, he remembers.

He opens the drawer, wriggling it a little to overcome stuckness.

“Find them?”

“Not yet,” Max replies.

The drawer doesn’t have much in it. An old address book with a stamped cover. An envelope, the flap unstuck. He picks up the envelope, only to realise too late that he’s picked it up the wrong way and the contents have slithered out and gone all over the floor.

They’re all photos. What are they doing here, out of the album? His mother’s always been meticulous about organising the family snaps, writing little labels beneath each one, everything in date order, every birthday and thanksgiving and Christmas, his first day of school, Lucy’s christening, Grandma’s wake. He wonders why she’s forgotten to file these ones. Maybe they’re someone else’s and they’ve ended up here by mistake.

“Max?” his mother calls, but he doesn’t hear her.

He bends to pick up one of the photos and with shock he realises it’s a photo of him. A little boy, dark haired, looks exactly like how he used to look, and he’s sitting on the shoulders of a man who must be his father. He turns the photo over, and there, in his mother’s neat writing, a label. _Max and Lewis, 1946_.

Lewis. His Dad’s name is Lewis.

“Max?” His mother’s standing at the door now, holding her glasses in one hand. “What are you looking at?”

He wordlessly holds up the photograph.

“Oh Max…” she says in a broken sort of voice. “Oh, Max.”

“What happened to him?” he finds himself saying.

“Oh Max, I’m not proud of it.”

“Not proud of what?”

She sighs, and puts on her reading glasses. “Here, let me have a look at it.” She smiles. “Oh, it’s your fifth birthday. He showed up like a bolt out of the blue.”

“And then what? Did he just…disappear or something? Why haven’t I seen him?” he demands.

She sits down heavily on the bed. “Well, you’re nearly a man now. I guess I’d better tell you everything.”

Everything isn’t much, it turns out. He keeps the photos.

—————————

When he’s finished school and ready to make his way in the world, Maxwell Nixon Royston still carries his Dad’s name. He remembers Pa protesting that he should drop it, but it turned out they couldn’t do it without Pa adopting him, and Pa couldn’t do that without his father’s written consent, so they just tacked Royston on the end of it. Saves the confusion with the school and the doctors (and makes his mother less obvious as a divorcee, he thinks.)

Now that he’s an adult, he could change it to whatever he wants.

He goes to New York to study literature, much to his Pa’s discomfort, but he loves the feeling of losing himself in a poem, the excitement of the form. The possibilities. When he’s there he discovers the world of beat poetry and Greenwich Village, and has a good too many late nights and too much coffee.

He finishes his degree but stays there, working in a camera shop at first, and then getting a job as an assistant editor at a publishing house. It’s there that he meets Mollie “Hazy” Kendricks.

She comes in one day to drop off something for her mother, Mrs Kendricks, a woman senior to him who he’s occasionally seen by the work noticeboard. She does something with layouts, he thinks, but isn’t sure.

“Hello, you must be Max,” Hazy says, holding out a hand for him to shake. The name suits her, she has a low drawling voice that seems musical.

She’s electric. Her hair is dark and sleek, cut in a short gamine cut. She wears stripes and large earrings, and reads French novels. Electric, like a bolt of static shock.

They start seeing each other. She’s a child of divorce, just like him. Within the year she moves into his apartment, bringing her cat with him, and colonises the place with dirty saucers, the odd cigarette stub and a typewriter she likes to pound away on. With her mother’s help she’s gotten a job in compositing for a magazine, but she really wants to write features.

“There’s so much happening right now,” she’ll say. “And I want to be there for all of it.”

He’s never met a girl like Hazy Kendricks, and can’t imagine there being one where he’s from.

Then one night they’re lazing about in Washington Square Park. It seems like he’s been with Hazy forever, and so it seems natural when she suddenly starts talking about the future.

“Max,” she says lazily, pouring some coffee out of a thermos, “you ever gonna introduce me to your parents?”

“Sure, if you like,” he says, nonplussed.

“Well, you’ve met my Mom already,” Hazy says.

“That’s not the same thing,” Max replies. “I met her before I met you.”

“Still, we’ve been together for what? Three years?” She wraps her arms around his shoulders. “Your parents live in Scranton, right?”

“Mom and my stepdad live in Scranton, yes. Dad doesn’t.”

“Oh?” Hazy raises an eyebrow. “I guess I just pictured your parents living right next to each other, two picket fence families.”

“Am I that square?” he laughs.

“Well you didn’t grow up here,” she says. “You’ve got that out-of-New-York feel. It’s like, looking at you, I can tell you probably used to drive all the time, played baseball in a big grassy field.”

“Hah,’ says Max. “Well no. My parents are divorced, remember. There’s probably some acrimoniousness there. I mean that’s the usual reason why people get divorced.” He yawns. “I haven’t seen my Dad in years anyway.” 

“Oh my parents used to scrap all the time when I was a kid,” Hazy says. “Turns out Mom’s just the kind of woman who does better as a free agent. So where’s your Dad live then?”

“Not sure. I think he lives somewhere in New York State? Apparently he used to work at a glass factory there.”

“Can’t be too many glass factories in New York State,” Hazy says. “I bet I could find it.”

“I’m sure you could.”

“Anyway - your Dad remarry? You got a stepmother you’re just dying to meet?”

“No,” says Max. “Nah, he lived with my Uncle Dick.”

“Is Uncle Dick his brother or something?” Hazy asks.

“No, Uncle Dick was one of his buddies from the war, not a real uncle. Just someone he had around. I don’t know, I’ll have to ask Mom about it. Not even sure why they got divorced, think it was something to do with him being away at war and Mom barely ever having seen him. Plus he used to drink a lot.”

“Your Dad lives with one of his war buddies?”

“Yeah, as far as I know,” Max says. “Like I said, I haven’t seen him for a long time.“

Something happens that he doesn’t expect. Hazy’s eyes widen and her face lights up with delight. She punches Max playfully on the arm.

“Max, your Dad’s a _queer!_ ”

What? How? How is it possible that his Dad is - How can she be so delighted?

“Since when is my Dad a homo?” he eventually manages to say. “He has a kid!”

“Yeah, and then he left your Mom to spend the rest of his life with another guy.”

“I’m pretty sure she left him,” he protests.

“Yeah, because she found out he was a queer! That’s as good a reason to leave someone as any.”

“But -“

“Oh don’t make that face. So what? Plenty of my friends are. Like Peter and Carl, did you know that?”

“What?”

“Oh man, this is a day of revelations for you.” She grins at him wickedly, and he suddenly thinks that if anyone’s going to find out his Dad’s a homosexual, it may as well someone who seems thrilled by it. Hazy lights a cigarette. “I _wish_ my Dad was a queer, he’s just a boring guy who had lots of affairs.”

“I’m glad you’re so happy about it,” says Max, trying to make a joke of having to reassess his whole life.

Hazy scruffs his hair. “Hey Max, stuff Scranton. Let’s go on a road trip to see your queer Dad.”

“I don’t even know where he lives,” protests Max.

“Well find out.”

And that’s how they find themselves folded into Hazy’s yellow VW beetle, driving across New York State. Max drives, then switches with Hazy when he gets a leg cramp. When they get to Corning his legs feel like they’re about to snap off.

“So, what do we do now?” he says, as they turn into the main street of the town. It’s a bit bigger than he thought it’d be, and he has no idea where his Dad could possibly be.

“I don’t know, ask at the drugstore or the post office maybe,” says Hazy. “Find the oldest guy there, he’s sure to remember two guys who lived in the same house and worked at the glass factory.”

“You sure about that? Are you forgetting the fallibility of human memory? The fact that some guys can’t remember more than six faces?”

“Well, suit yourself,” says Hazy, and pulls over outside the drugstore. “If you had a photo it might help.”

Turns out he does. He’d slipped the one of him and his father in the inside cover of his address book, just in case. He hands it over, but lets Hazy go out on her own. She comes back 10 minutes later, holding a couple of bottles of coke, the address book tucked under her arm.

“He hadn’t seen the guy, he says, but when I said he might live with another guy somewhere in the town and that he used to work at the glass factory, this older lady behind the counter says that it sounds familiar. I showed her the photo and she says “there’s a guy who could be him but older, runs a feed store out at Painted Post. My husband goes there to get seeds sometimes.” Then she goes “old photo? Who’s the kid?” and I say “Oh he’s sitting out there in the car right now.”

“Right.” says Max, his hands sweaty on his bottle of coke. He’s not sure what scares him more - the thought that he’ll never find his Dad, or the thought that he will.

Hazy unfolds the map. “Ok, so for Painted Post we apparently have to go _this_ way, and then - you wanna drive or shall I?”

“You keep going,” Max says. “I’ll navigate.” He puts his feet up on the dash.

A short drive and two more stops for directions later - once at a gas station, once at a farmhouse with washing on the line and chickens, they’ve found it. It’s a low building painted green and yellow, with bales of hay stacked outside, and the words NIXON & WINTERS FEEDS AND FARM SUPPLIES in large letters on the roof. Hazy pulls up in the gravel parking lot, next to a pickup with a black-and-tan dog sitting in the tray. Max’s legs are trembling when he gets out of the car, and it’s more than just the drive.

He knows there’s a town called Nixon, and he knows it has something to do with his Dad, but he knows his Dad isn’t there anymore. Here, his name is on the roof. A sign he has to be there.

When they walk into the store, he’s taken aback. He wasn’t sure what to expect from a feed store - a dusty shed, he supposed, but it’s like a general store, an agricultural archive of everything you might ever need. There’s a big counter, dozens of wooden bins labelled _sorghum, millet, wheat_ and _pigeon peas_ , and a huge rack of seeds. There are shelves with things labelled drench. Rat traps. A row of paper notices taped to the counter, advertising peafowl chicks, a covering bull, black minorca roosters. A ginger cat sits on the counter, and next to him, stands a ginger man.

“Good afternoon, may I help you?” the man says. He’s tall, rangy, with a firm, kindly face, and he’s wearing a faded blue chambray shirt.

“Oh, I just…“ Max begins, before petering out. He doesn’t know what to say. The man peers at him, confused.

“Of course, you’re welcome to look around,” the man says, and Max goes to move away from the counter and pretend he’s interested in purchasing vegetable seeds or one of the day old chicks he’s just noticed peeping in a large glassed-fronted box, when Hazy walks up beside him and pulls something out of her bag. 

“Hey, I was wondering if you could help us with something?” Hazy says, and before Max can do or say anything, she’s slapped the photo down on the countertop, next to a notice about poultry showing. She taps the photograph. “We’re looking for him.”

“Oh?” says the man, pulling a pair of glasses out of his pocket, a gesture that reminds Max of his mother. He doesn’t think about his mother for much longer though, because the man’s now gone completely white, like he’s seen a ghost.

“Where did you get this?” the man eventually says in a strangled sounding voice.

“My mother gave it to me,” Max says. “Why?”

“It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen this photo,” the man says. “Makes sense that she’d have a copy.” He’s trembling. “You’re him, right?”

There’s a noise behind him. Max turns and registers another man in the back of the store, wheeling a bag of grain on a hand truck.

“Lew?” calls the man at the counter, a warning sound in his voice. “Lew, you better come and see this.”

The man lets go of the grain and turns around, walking over, looking confused -

and it’s him. It’s him. He’s greyer, and he doesn’t look exactly like the man in the photo, but he’s got those same thick eyebrows, the same dark features, the same stockiness. He remembers the man’s shoulders.

“Dad?”

His voice is shaky. Beside him, Hazy’s breath is sharp. Something strange happens to his father’s face. It crumples, as if all the air was let out of him in one go.

Hazy nudges him, and he staggers forward and wraps his arms around his father, who’s crying and crying and crying - 

“Max,” the voice comes, deep from his father’s chest, a sobbing sound against his shoulder. His hands are big and rough and warm on his back, and his father’s kisses on his face are scratchy, just like he remembered them being, and in that moment he’s five years old again. “Max, I didn’t want to leave you.”

“I know,’ he finds himself saying, rubbing Lewis Nixon’s back. “I know.”


End file.
